Ed Westwick of Gossip Girl and Eric Red’s haunted house movie 100 Feet and Madalina Ghenea, who played cinema icon Sophia Loren in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, star in the shark thriller Deep Fear, a project we’ve been tracking ever since we heard it was going to be filming in Malta and the West Indies at the start of 2022. Now we have a great update to share about this one: the release date is just a month away! Screen Daily reports that Gravitas Ventures has acquired the US and Canadian distribution rights to the film and will be giving it a VOD release on November 3rd!
Directed by Marcus Adams (Long Time Dead) from a screenplay written by Robert Capelli Jr. (The Rules (for Men)) and Sophia Eptamentis (Invincible Summer), Deep Fear centers on Naomi (Ghenea), a yachtswoman embarking on a solo trip in the Caribbean. Her last stop is Grenada, where she plans to rendezvous with her boyfriend Jackson (Westwick), until a storm forces her off course and into the paths of drug traffickers. When Naomi is forced to dive to retrieve their drugs from a shipwrecked vessel she comes face to face with a bevvy of vicious sharks. With only her wits to fend them off, Naomi must do whatever she can to survive.
Westwick and Ghenea are joined in the cast by Macarena Gómez (Dagon), Stany Coppet (Pure Life), and John-Paul Pace (Measures).
Adams had this to say about the project: “Deep Fear’s tense and deadly underwater scenes are the visual and metaphorical essence of the movie. When we filled the studio’s water tank (100m width x 13m depth) with over a million gallons of seawater, we were told it would need four days for the sediment to settle and allow for visibility. Four days we didn’t have in the shooting schedule. Fortunately, by day two, we filmed a test dive and I knew we’d struck gold. The lack of clarity and murky conditions created the perfect tone and setting for this dark and sinister thriller. Visible enough to see but not enough to be sure of their surroundings, this rendered the characters to be only partially in control and creates a feeling of intense threat. Plunged into the deep-sea blackness, there is a visceral fear that grips our film’s audience and won’t let go.”
Deep Fear was produced by Brilliant Pictures’ Sean O’Kelly and Marc Bikindou, as well as Halo Pictures’ Engelbert Grech and Chris Bongirne.
Gravitas Ventures’ Danielle Gasher provided the following statement on the distribution deal: “Deep Fear is everything you want it to be. An action-packed, edge-of-your-seat survival movie with great performances from leads Ed Westwick and Madalina Ghenea. Gravitas Ventures is thrilled to be partnering with Brilliant Pictures on this movie, and to bring Deep Fear to North American audiences on November 3.”
Producer O’Kelly added: “We’re thrilled to be teaming up with Danielle and the talented team at Gravitas to bring Deep Fear to audiences across North America. Deep Fear arrives hot on the heels of the cocaine-shark frenzy, as recently seen off the coast of Florida. Having spent so much time creating the strongest visual effects, we can’t wait to share it.”
Are you interested in Deep Fear, and will you be checking it out when it’s released in November? Let us know by leaving a comment below.